Tuesday, September 13, 2011

So it was a pretty eventful day yesterday. I made it to Vegas with really no problems.

View from my room.

To get here was a fun time. I left Memphis a little before lunch and put the hammer down on the interstate. It was clear, dry, sunny, and awesome. I did run into a ton of police officers so I couldn't drive 90 or anything but still made good time. On the way to my friend's house to park for free, I was slightly misguided and drove a little more than I needed to. Oh well. At the airport the lady at the xray machine chewed me out for not sending my computer through solo but I smiled, apologized, and proceeded on about my ways. I get to the gate and the only spot with open seats has some crazy Mennonite family who is crunching pretzels into the floor and running around barefoot. (They might have not been Mennonite, but they were extremely religious and crazy.) The kids were jumping on the seats and causing a huge ruckus. One little boy had three fingers stuck in his mouth drooling and having a huge coughing fit. I generally don't mind kids but this was more of a total family creep-out.The mom was giving me funny looks, the dad kept talking about how one time a gander of geese was caught in an airplane engine. I wanted to stick a writing pen through my gauged ear and tell the kids that tattoos are rad.

I flew into Denver chasing a 2 inch strip of sunset and amazed at the cool sight of the moon rising over the cloud cover. It was a cool site. I chatted with a nice guy on my flight from Denver to Vegas and arrived unscathed. I chatted it up with a lady who works for Saris on my walk/train ride from my terminal to the baggage claim. My friends picked me up at the baggage claim and we headed to the strip. I was completely overwhelmed and was asked "is there anything you have wanted to do?" and my answer was "You just plucked me out of Tipton County and dropped me on the Vegas strip".

Besides being completely dazzled, seeing two weddings after midnight, and realizing that this trip was pretty awesome already. I crawled into bed at 1am Vegas time, which is 3am Memphis time, which is officially 5 hours past my bed time.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

On my side of things lately I have been mingling the line between hectic and lazy. There are a ton of new cool things going on in my little corner of the world. I will begin at the beginning: I moved into a house where I am really close to our Cordova location of work. My dog has a yard to play in, other dogs to play with, and a pair of cats that terrorize him and try to burn up his seemingly unlimited supply of energy.

The weather has been great and the weather has been much more agreeable over the last two weeks, you can actually go for a ride without dripping sweat from every square of your body in the first 2 miles. I have converted my mountain bike back to a regular handlebar, single speed mountain bike. The Cannondale CAAD10 has been proving to be a great bike for the road, but only when I ride it.

This year a friend offered me the great opportunity to join him and his lovely lady at Interbike to help with their booth. This is what I will be hustling and bustling all week long, shaking hands, hustling shirts, serving booze, giving people an idea of how amazing the one off skinsuit from FUCancer looks, and generally just enjoying myself.

We will be hanging out at Booth #1048 and having a good time. Want to stop by? Please do. Remember a ton of this merchandise goes to helping more people. Soft shirts, good causes, and great style. That's right, I'll see you there.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

I am going to try to summarize my months of June & July into just a few words. Long, full, and tiring. I had been living in Midtown in the same apartment for the last two years. I had graduated from the UofM and was moving on to things like working in a bike shop. The area wasn't great for riding my bike from, the rent was a little steep to swing by myself, and with student loan repayment beginning I decided to seek shelter in the upstairs of a friends home. I spent most of June trying to ride a little bit and pack up my apartment. This was the first time of moving as an adult and I had accumulated a ton of crap.

When I began my push to move I decided to make a few piles of stuff that would help me move more efficiently. The piles included Trash, Donate, Sell, Treasure.

I threw away a lot of stuff mercilessly. There were things I just didn't need. Things I didn't want. Things I had no use for. I donated some stuff to the goodwill that was useable but not worth keeping around because I didn't see myself using it again. I had some stuff good enbough to sell but wouldn't be used again, and a few items I absolutely treasured.

Once I knew I was moving I began moving stuff pretty regularly between my days off and evenings. I began situating things before I moved in and tried to stay tidy. Rather than completely piling it all in at once I would take boxes over, unpack them, and then take those boxes back to the apartment to start over. That worked great until the last big dig and I had to pile it up anyways. Here we are 5 weeks later and some boxes are still just sitting idly.

I did sell some things that I wanted to get ride of in order to make space and money. It was refreshing and labor intensive.

I had house sat here a good bit over the last year or so and Marley was well accustomed to the other animals and the yard situation. I can say overall I think Marley is excited about having a yard to play in. He has also made good friends with one of the cats and they will fight and play. Marley has even nearly taught the big dog Turbo how to play tug o war with a rope.

The moral of the story is things have been going well, just busy. I have been working a good bit in order to help keep things at working rolling smoothly and evenly. I have been trying hard to ride more (which is still hit n miss). I am pretty fired up about cyclocross season and looking forward to seeing Cross Vegas while out at Interbike. More on Interbike to come tomorrow after the store meeting.